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(RNS) An 84-year-old nun was sentenced to nearly three years in prison on Tuesday (Feb. 18) for breaking into a Tennessee nuclear facility in July 2012.
Sister Megan Rice and two other anti-nuclear activists were convicted last May of breaking into a federal comp...
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Eds: A version of this story originally appeared in USA Today. It is available for use by RNS subscribers. Please use the USA Today byline.
(RNS) The family of a little girl in western Virginia has removed her from her school after administrators said she did not ap...
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PHILADELPHIA (RNS) Advance preparations for the wildly popular Pope Francis, due in Philadelphia five months from now, might rival the miracle of Jesus feeding the 5,000.
Security stakes are high, both for the pontiff and the estimated 1.5 to 2 million fans from at...
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WASHINGTON (RNS) Most Americans who file income tax returns won't be affected by proposed changes in how charitable contributions are deducted, but that hasn't stopped charitable groups from lobbying Congress to fight any change in deductions as part of the "fiscal cl...
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Adelle Banks, Religion News Service's production editor and national reporter, visited the Rejoice School of Ballet, a faith-based nonprofit in Nashville, Tenn., during a November multimedia boot camp with the Freedom Forum's Diversity Institute. Video by Adelle Bank...
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No, you can't get fit by watching TV, or taking the magic $ 19.99 item ("but if you call now....") from TV.

and No, you can't get spiritually illuminated by taking the whatever color pill as in the otherwise awesome Matrix film. Sorry Keanu.

The great Muslim scholar, Ghazali (d. 1111), wrote a whole treatise called Kimiya-ye Sa'adat in persian. Its title means "Alchemy of happiness", and also "salvation of bliss." Part of the notion is that there is something in us that can be transformed from the base to the lowly, from the "leaden" to the "golden" to bring about that salvation and bliss here and now.

In our modern science books, alchemy is often talked about either as a pseudo-science (at worse) or as the pre-cursor to modern chemistry (at best). It was neither. It was ultimately an awareness that all of the universe, including us, is ultimately interconnected, and that all of us--including us--needs to be transformed towards the blissful, the golden, the lovely.

May we all experience that alchemy of happiness.

John Lennon [image here] was an adamant secular humanist, yet there is something about his quote that touches on that same notion.

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Omid Safi is a Professor of Islamic Studies at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, specializing in contemporary Islamic thought and classical Islam. An award-winning teacher and speaker, his most recent book, "Memories of Muhammad," looks at the biography and legacy of the Prophet Muhammad.
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